What is your hardware setup for LOTS of hard drives?

[MBSki 1114]

I'm currently rethinking my current hardware setup and wondering what everyone else is using. I'm currently using an OriginPC Genesis super tower case that includes 10 hot swap drives in the front, and an expansion bay at the bottom (pic below) that can hold another 12 hard drives. I have 2 LSI 8-port controller cards for the extra hard drives and everything is internal. I'm starting to think I should instead get some kind of external chassis just for the hard drives and use a smaller PC tower just for windows. Leave all the hard drives external connected by SAS cables. That way I could have all my drives as hot swap, although I can't find a chassis just for hot swap drives.

What is everyone else doing for a lot of hard drives?

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

I do not use or need an enclosure for my 14 hard drives I have connected to my server. Every drive is an external USB drive (varying from 4tb to 10tb) with its own enclosure and they all live on shelves in the same rolling rack that my server lives on.

My reliability is high (at least I have only had one drive failure in the last eight to ten years) and I use StableBit's DrivePool to merge all the drives and management is easy. I do have a small fan that blows air across the server(s) and all the drives to reduce heat as heat is the real danger to electronics.

I use DrivePool's duplication feature for my media files so that the loss of a single drive will not result in the loss of any data (Which has been used really only once but it worked without problem that time.) Also adding drives is just a matter of plugging a new one in and using the software to add it to the pool. After that DrivePool handles all the rebalancing and duplication without problems.

The only problem I have is a bit of clutter and mess due to all the wires but my server system lives in my back room so I do not have to look at it and, when I do look, I find the "mess" comforting more, much more, than distressing.

[Tur0k 148]

So, my configuration is getting a bit on in years.  my objective was to keep the hardware on Prosumer gear where possible to keep costs down and then sprinkle in enterprise equipment where necessary.  I wanted the case to be relatively rugged and rack mountable. I went with a PlinkUSA 3U case that is 21" deep.  I am now getting pretty cramped for space as now i am using both PCIE x16, the PCIE x8 and a PCIE 1x.  I am using a PCIE riser cable to remote mount my Quadro card.  8x of my drives are passed directly to my LSI 9207-8i.  the remainder plug directly into my motherboard SATA interfaces.  my next HBA will be a 12 Gbps 16i card with native NVME support...)  I obfuscate my hardware from my system layer using vsphere ESX 7.  I then have a Freenas/Truenas VM and pass-through the LSI 9207-8i and all SATA drives to it for storage management.  I used to be able to have a second 512GB NVME that I would use to make copies of my VM system drives.  that stopped working when I added my 3rd PCEI card that was greater than 1x...  My remining 1TB NVME drive plugs directly into the M.2 slot on my motherboard and is passed to the ESX VMhost to handle system drives.

[MBSki 1114]

Thanks guys.

@Gilgamesh_48 That definitely is a simple setup, but agree that I can see how it would get a bit message.

@Tur0k Your 5x NAS is in the rack right? I was hoping I could get an external hard drive enclosure...something that could hold 10 - 20 hot swap drives. Something that has mounts for hot swap bays and just power and fans. When you get the 16i card are you planning to get a different enclosure for your hard drives? I can't seem to find any enclosures just for the hard drives unless I did rack mount.  

[rbjtech 5284]

I use 3 of these in my server - so a 15 bay setup 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284163818152?hash=item42297bc2a8:g:aw8AAOSwdRdgEnoB

For continuous use, then you MUST have decent fan assisted (high cfm) airflow over densely grouped HDD's.  In the above, I replaced the fans with decent 80mm x 25mm deep commercial fans - they are noisy at high rpm but I use a temp controller pwm fan controller to keep the drives at a constant 30-35 degrees, with alarm and shutdown @ 45 degrees.

Single HDD USB enclosures just cook hard drives, as they have no active cooling ..   

[rbjtech 5284]

24 minutes ago, mbarylski said:

Thanks guys.

@Gilgamesh_48 That definitely is a simple setup, but agree that I can see how it would get a bit message.

@Tur0k Your 5x NAS is in the rack right? I was hoping I could get an external hard drive enclosure...something that could hold 10 - 20 hot swap drives. Something that has mounts for hot swap bays and just power and fans. When you get the 16i card are you planning to get a different enclosure for your hard drives? I can't seem to find any enclosures just for the hard drives unless I did rack mount.  

If you just need USB 3.0 (Direct Access) - then maybe something like this (which I bought recently as 'portable storage') - tbh it's a lot of money for what is a 5 bay HDD hot swap enclosure with DUEL fans, but then again a 5 bay NAS is going to cost double this ..

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TerraMaster-D5-300C-External-Enclosure-Exclusive/dp/B071S6ZCMM/ref=asc_df_B071S6ZCMM?tag=bingshoppinga-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=79852089215499&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4583451664080317&psc=1

[MBSki 1114]

2 hours ago, rbjtech said:

I use 3 of these in my server - so a 15 bay setup 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284163818152?hash=item42297bc2a8:g:aw8AAOSwdRdgEnoB

For continuous use, then you MUST have decent fan assisted (high cfm) airflow over densely grouped HDD's.  In the above, I replaced the fans with decent 80mm x 25mm deep commercial fans - they are noisy at high rpm but I use a temp controller pwm fan controller to keep the drives at a constant 30-35 degrees, with alarm and shutdown @ 45 degrees.

Single HDD USB enclosures just cook hard drives, as they have no active cooling ..   

Yea, I like these as an option. I have 2 5 drive hot swap bays in the front of my PC case, but I'm out of space for any more. Only option in my case is the expansion bay on the bottom. I was thinking I could just get a bare case for ONLY hot swap bays, but I can't find any case that's main purpose is just to house hot swap bays. Are you aware of any?

I've considered USB 3.0 as well, but isn't that going to be considerably slower than SAS? I've done that before for my backups and I was never impressed with the performance. 

[Carlo 4560]

I've got a bit of everything with with 24 bay cases, 8 bay cases, 2 WD NAS, Synology NAS, dozen or so USB3 Externals.

Some are located in my non attached garage for backup and some are primary.

[clarkss12 304]

4 minutes ago, cayars said:

I've got a bit of everything with with 24 bay cases, 8 bay cases, 2 WD NAS, Synology NAS, dozen or so USB3 Externals.

Some are located in my non attached garage for backup and some are primary.

Clarkss shakes his head........

[MBSki 1114]

26 minutes ago, cayars said:

I've got a bit of everything with with 24 bay cases, 8 bay cases, 2 WD NAS, Synology NAS, dozen or so USB3 Externals.

Some are located in my non attached garage for backup and some are primary.

How are you connecting them to the PC? Mostly USB and CAT6?

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

14 minutes ago, clarkss12 said:

Clarkss shakes his head........

That is perfectly OK. In some ways @cayarsis a bit of a risk taker but, mostly, he is a belt and suspenders type of risk taker.

I would not be surprised to find out that he also has supplies for a few years stocked away.

But, by having a variety he keeps his life interesting and his mind fresh.

There are those that say my mind is fresh as well, freshly dead. (see "Young Frankenstein" for the oblique reference.)

[Tur0k 148]

9 hours ago, mbarylski said:

Thanks guys.

@Gilgamesh_48 That definitely is a simple setup, but agree that I can see how it would get a bit message.

@Tur0k Your 5x NAS is in the rack right? I was hoping I could get an external hard drive enclosure...something that could hold 10 - 20 hot swap drives. Something that has mounts for hot swap bays and just power and fans. When you get the 16i card are you planning to get a different enclosure for your hard drives? I can't seem to find any enclosures just for the hard drives unless I did rack mount.  

yes, the 2x drive enclosures fit in the 3x 5.25 bays on either side of the case.  they have SATA for connectivity and have a built in fan for air flow.   

[Carlo 4560]

8 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

That is perfectly OK. In some ways @cayarsis a bit of a risk taker but, mostly, he is a belt and suspenders type of risk taker.

I would not be surprised to find out that he also has supplies for a few years stocked away.

But, by having a variety he keeps his life interesting and his mind fresh.

There are those that say my mind is fresh as well, freshly dead. (see "Young Frankenstein" for the oblique reference.)

It's no "blast from the past" fallout shelter but it'll do.

[aspdend 177]

I used to use my old fractal design define xl case with icydock 5,25" drive enclosures, but that got too restrictive so I bought a rackmount case with 24 bay hot swappable drives from servercase uk - best solution for me

https://www.servercase.co.uk/shop/server-cases/rackmount/4u-chassis/4u-server-case-w-24x-35-hot-swappable-satasas-drive-bays-12gbs-hd-minisas-sc-4824/

[MBSki 1114]

4 hours ago, aspdend said:

I used to use my old fractal design define xl case with icydock 5,25" drive enclosures, but that got too restrictive so I bought a rackmount case with 24 bay hot swappable drives from servercase uk - best solution for me

https://www.servercase.co.uk/shop/server-cases/rackmount/4u-chassis/4u-server-case-w-24x-35-hot-swappable-satasas-drive-bays-12gbs-hd-minisas-sc-4824/

I was thinking of something like the Fractal, but something not so deep. Something tall and shallow where I can fit 3 icydock's, fans, and a PSU and that's it. Can't find anything though. All the tower cases are too deep. 

It does seem like the only option is the rackmount that you got, but man is that thing big. Only place I could really put it is on top of my desk and it would take up a massive amount of space. Again a shallower option would work better for me.

When you searched for the rackmount did you come across any other runner up options? And how are you connecting the drives to the rackmount? Fiber or just running SAS cables straight to the drives? 

[aspdend 177]

On 04/10/2021 at 14:29, mbarylski said:

I was thinking of something like the Fractal, but something not so deep. Something tall and shallow where I can fit 3 icydock's, fans, and a PSU and that's it. Can't find anything though. All the tower cases are too deep. 

It does seem like the only option is the rackmount that you got, but man is that thing big. Only place I could really put it is on top of my desk and it would take up a massive amount of space. Again a shallower option would work better for me.

When you searched for the rackmount did you come across any other runner up options? And how are you connecting the drives to the rackmount? Fiber or just running SAS cables straight to the drives? 

yeah, the tower cases I;ve seen are generally deep - my server chassis is big, but thats not a probalem for me - I wanted something to house my 17 HDD's more easily...thye do have shorter cases, but you are sacrificing quantity of disks for space, hence why I went with the bigger one. The backplane is Mini SAS so I got some external cables to connect my external HBA cards (as they are much cheaper than internal ones) and my cables connect in the rear if the chassis then come back in again to connect to the backplane miniSAS to miniSAS (different form factors I would have to look up)

[rbjtech 5284]

I'm on the lookout for a 'short' (~500mm deep) rack mounted 'disk only' version of the chassis you linked above.   'short' chassis for the CPU etc are easy enough to find - my plan is to 'link' the disk chassis with the server chassis using external SAS as you've said above.  Then you can 'stack' disk trays in a 'short/~600mm' rack (which is what I have) and this also of course means you can add entire disk trays as required.

[aspdend 177]

20 hours ago, rbjtech said:

I'm on the lookout for a 'short' (~500mm deep) rack mounted 'disk only' version of the chassis you linked above.   'short' chassis for the CPU etc are easy enough to find - my plan is to 'link' the disk chassis with the server chassis using external SAS as you've said above.  Then you can 'stack' disk trays in a 'short/~600mm' rack (which is what I have) and this also of course means you can add entire disk trays as required.

You just want to search for a JBOD chassis - I was on the look out for ojne of those before - I was thinking along the same lines as you - I already had my server set up in my Fractal case - why not just add a JBOD chassis for loads of disk storage...answer, because they are really expensive - at least the ones I could find - hence I went the whole hog and did the big server case

[rbjtech 5284]

Thanks - and yes, they are very expensive for what is just a shorter server case lol.

So I bit the bullet and bought 2 x SC43550B's yesterday from servercase.co.uk (thanks for the link btw), I already have 3 x SC-500's - so I'm going to transplant those into one of these cases to give me 15 x front hot-swap drives.  The other is my offsite backup server, that can use fixed HDD's, don't need hot-swap on that one.  This server case is also 'short' (it's 550mm - it even has a fan wall) so fits nicely (just) in a 600mm wall mounted rack.  HDD Fan's will be reversed so it blows air 'out' the front (as I do now) 

Just need to wait for the intel 12th Gen to arrive and then start the big upgrade lol ..  

Edited October 9, 2021 by rbjtech

[Carlo 4560]

I guess it depends on need and bay count.  A Syba 4 Bay box is around $122 and 8 bay for $170.

[MBSki 1114]

2 minutes ago, cayars said:

I guess it depends on need and bay count.  A Syba 4 Bay box is around $122 and 8 bay for $170.

Ideally for me, 20+, but I could get 2 or 3 8-bays and just get more as I need them.

[rbjtech 5284]

Rack mount, redundant PSU's and SAS backplane adds a large amount to the cost.

Stand alone USB bays are cheap in comparison I agree - they have their place (I have some myself) but they are not really engineered for Professional or Enterprise level server computing.

 

[MBSki 1114]

Just now, rbjtech said:

Rack mount, redundant PSU's and SAS backplane adds a large amount to the cost.

Stand alone USB bays are cheap in comparison I agree - they have their place (I have some myself) but they are not really engineered for Professional or Enterprise level server computing.

 

Hmmm, I'll have to look closer at them. I want something that has power but that I can run an external SAS cable to. I don't want to use USB.

[pclausen 44]

I run a pair of stacked SuperMicro 846 chassis, each with 24 hot swap drives.  See sig.

I think I paid around $500 for each chassis with a SAS2 backplane and Platinum PSUs, so not too bad really.

Edited October 9, 2021 by pclausen

[MBSki 1114]

2 hours ago, cayars said:

A Syba 8 bay box for $170.

This (8 Bay 2.5 Inch and 3.5 Inch SATA Hard Drive External USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure (sybausa.com)) looks like a really good option except for the USB connection. 

Anyone know of something similar with just power that allows you to add your own data connection?